Commenting mainly on France and U.S.policy in the Middle East and Central Asia.
Author of "Web of Deceit, the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush." Now finishing a novel, "The Watchman's File," delving into Israel's most closely-guarded secret. [It's not the bomb.]

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Friday, October 26, 2012

;
A friend, with good sources in the Israeli government,
claims that the head of Israel’s Mossad has made several trips to deal with his
counterparts in Saudi Arabia—one of the results: an agreement that the Saudis
would bankroll the series of assassinations of several of Iran’s top nuclear
experts that have occurred over the past couple of years.The amount involved, my friend claims,
was $1 billion dollars. A sum, he says, the Saudis considered cheap for the
damage done to Iran’s nuclear program.

At first blush, the tale sounds preposterous. On the other
hand. it makes eminent sense. The murky swamp of Middle East politics has
nothing to do with the easy slogans and 30 second sound bites of presidential
debates.

After all, nowhere more than in the Middle East does the
maxim hold true: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And both Israel and the
Saudis have always detested Iran’s Shiite fundamentalist leaders. The feeling
is mutual. Tehran has long been accused of stirring up trouble among Saudi’s
restless Shiites.

Israeli and Saudi leaders particularly fear Iran’s attempts
to develop nuclear weapons. Thus, it would only be natural that (along with the
U.S.) they would back a coordinated program to at least slow up, if not permanently
cripple, Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

It also makes perfect sense, that, in retaliation for the
cyber attacks on theircentrifuges, the Iranians reportedly launched their own cyber attack on
a Saudi state-owned target: Saudi Aramco, the world’s most valuable
company.Last August 15th,
someone with privileged access to Aramco’s computers was able to unleash a
virus that wreaked havoc with the company’s systems. U.S.
intelligence experts point their finger at Tehran.

Indeed, a report earlier this year
by Tel Aviv University cites Saudi Arabia as the last hope and defense line for Israel. With most
of Israel’s traditional allies in the region sent packing or undermined by the
Arab Spring, the Saudis are the Jewish State’s last chance to protect its
political interests in the Arab world.

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Several questions asked in the third presidential debate were never clearly answered. One of the most vital concerns Israel: What exactly is the U.S. commitment to that country? It's a question that an American president may suddenly be confronted with, some chaotic night at three A.M.The reporter moderating the debate attempted to get an answer.

BOB
SCHIEFFER: “Red lines, Israel and Iran. Would either of you —Would either
of you be willing to declare that an attack on Israel is an attack on the
United States, which of course is the same promise that we give to our close
allies like Japan?

And if you made such a declaration, would not
that deter Iran? It’s certainly deterred the Soviet Union for a long, long time
when we made that — when we made that promise to our allies.

[[Good question…a request to clarify what has been a very intimate
but imprecise relationship--challenging an American president --or future
president--to make a stark commitment to Israel on his own accord, without
seeking the consent of the Senate or Congress. Which, who knows, one chaotic
night at three in the morning, he might be called upon to do.]

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, first of all, Israel is a true friend. It
is our greatest ally in the region. And if Israel is attacked, America will
stand with Israel.

I’ve made that clear throughout my presidency. And —

[Just a minute, he didn’t really answer…but the moderator was
there:]

MR. SCHIEFFER: So you’re saying we’ve already made that
declaration?

[Good question, but dodged again:]

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I will stand with Israel if they are attacked.

[Unasked question: What does
“stand by” mean, Mr. President? Cheer from the sidelines? Send emergency
arms, dispatch rockets to shoot down incoming missiles, as was done in past
crises by the U.S?

But Obama went on.]

OBAMA: And this is the reason why, working with Israel, we have
created the strongest military and intelligence cooperation between our two
countries in history. In fact, this week we’ll be carrying out the largest
military exercise with Israel in history, this very week.

[Unasked Question: Does that mean, Mr. President, that American
armed forces would become directly involved if Israel were attacked?…if say,
its perimeter defenses were overwhelmed? If the Arabs or Iranians were marching on Tel Aviv?

If not, what is the point of carrying out the “largest military
exercises in history” with Israel? Exercising for what?”]

[Next to a question about economic sanctions against Iran…]

OBAMA: …the reason we did this is
because a nuclear Iran is a threat to our national security and it’s threat to
Israel’s national security. We cannot afford to have a nuclear arms race in the
most volatile region of the world.

MR.
ROMNEY: Well, first of all, I — I want to underscore the — the same point the
president made, which is that if I’m president of the United States, when I’m
president of the United States, we will stand with Israel. And — and if Israel
is attacked, we have their back, not just diplomatically, not just culturally,
but militarily.

[Unanswered
Question: Uh, again, what does that mean, Governor? Would you commit boots on
the ground? Cruise missiles? Destroyers? Under what circumstances?]

[Then,
when the subject of Egypt’s shaky new government came up]

OBAMA: They [the Egyptians] have to abide by their treaty with
Israel. That is a red line for us, because not only is Israel’s security at
stake, but our security is at stake if that unravels.

[Mr.
President, could you explain why America’s security is dependent on a treaty between
Egypt and Israel?]

[If
these question weren’t asked during the debate, did any one hear them raised afterwards-- by any of the army of pundits?]

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

France is in deep trouble. As I
blogged yesterday, this country has spent several billions of Euros over the
past 11 years sending its troops, planes and ships, to join the War against Terrorism
in Central Asia. Now, however, the French are finally discovering the threat of
radical Islam is at home, under their own noses.

According to a poll in today’s centre-right Figaro, 82% of
the 44,000 French questioned fear an increase in Islamic terrorism in France. Provoking
this fear, sensational headlines about a network of 12 jihadis—converted in
overcrowded French prisons—and rounded up by police over the past few days.

But, more serious, than the threat of radical Islam is the
fact that France is menaced by mounting racial tensions stoked by extremists on
both sides.

I
discussed the rise of radical Islam among France’s five million Muslims in
previous blogs. An equally alarming development is that, on the other side, Islamophobes
are also on the rise.

This past weekend, one of the most prominent of Nicolas Sarkozy’s
former ministers, Jean-Francois Cope, who is campaigning to become leader of his
party, the UMP, , made headlines with the story of a good “French” working
class family, whose son, as he was leaving school, had his pain au chocolat ripped
from his hands by “a young punk” (obviously Muslim) who told the distraught little boy he had
no right to be eating during the Muslim fast of Ramadan.

Overnight, the little French boy losing his pain au chocolat
to a brutish Muslim kid has, in the eyes of many French, become a symbol of
what’s really wrong with this country.

It’s also become
endlessly discussed on French television.

On the Grand Journal last night, one of the commentators, Jean
Michel Aphatie, pointed out that, if you check the dates of Ramadan –which was
in the summer for the past couple of years--there’s no way this incident could have
recently happened, if it did happen at all.

In any case, as Aphatie pointed out, Cope’s views are far
from original. He presented a
video of former French President Jacques Chirac, delivering a stunningly crude
anti Arab/Mulsim diabtribe at a banquet in Orleans in 1991:

Imagine, said Chirac, a working man, who together with his
wife makes 15,000 francs a year, and is sitting on the landing of his little
flat and sees across from him, on the same landing another “head of a family with
three or four wives and twenty kids, who, naturally without working, is making
50,000 francs a year--from welfare.

“You add to that,” said the President of France, “the noise--and
the smell--and the French worker goes crazy.”

The only difference between Cope and Chirac, suggested, Jean-Michel
Apathie, was that Chirac was probably a little drunk at the time.

Indeed, here in Paris, my wife is constantly being forwarded
some astonishingly blunt racist
videos--from well meaning friends. Like one received today, that
apparently originated with a Catholic professional, we know, an educated, upper
class man; who sent it to another Jewish friend of ours, also charming and
highly educated; who forwarded it to us:

It’s called “Les Envahisseurs” and is a dubbed takeoff of
the science fiction series, The Invaders, from the Sixties. While the original
series dealt with evil creatures from another star system trying to take over
the earth, this modified version substitutes the intergalactic villains with,
of course, the Muslims in France.

They’re fomenting jihad, taking over the streets with their
prayers, demanding that schools serve only hallal meat. When the hero turns for
help to the authorities, he finds that it’s too late—they too are Muslims!

The furor over Cope’s pain au chocolat tale was still on the
mid-day TV news today in Paris.

-We watched as France’s Prime Minister proclaimed his
determination to go after all forms of “extremism.”

On the same show there was also video of hundreds of outraged
French workers, whose jobs are at risk because of factory shutdowns, being blocked
by riot police from entering the lustrous automobile show currently going on in
Paris. One of the factories being shut down is Peugeot.

-The TV news also had live coverage of French President
Holland presenting his plan to totally overhaul France’s creaking education
system. Unemployment among French under 25 is 23%.

After the President had finished, one expert interviewed on
the news show asked, with the government having to drastically cut back its
budget, where the money for reform would come.

As he was talking, a crawl ran across the bottom of the
screen, a bulletin about the round up members of the internal investigation
unit of the Marseilles police. Turns out 19 of them have been hauled in,
targets themselves of corruption charges.

-One bright spot: A sponsor of the TV News today was the French Justice
Ministry, with a major job offer: they’re looking for more prison guards.

Meanwhile, some
1200 French troops remain in Central Asia, continuing to support the “War on
Terrorism.”

Monday, October 8, 2012

Have to admit there’s a certain bitter irony in today’ s headlines
in France about an Islamic terrorist network being rounded up in Strasbourg,
Paris, Nice and Cannes, at the same time as the TV news shows French forces
beginning their withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Why the irony? Because while France has spent billions of
Euros over the past ten years to battle the threat of radical Islam in Central
Asia, they find once again the threat is homegrown, fostered in their own
schools, decaying neighborhoods and prisons.

As I’ve
written in previous blogs, It’s got much more to do with economic
stagnation, bleak job outlooks, mounting food prices—in short, increasingly
bitter frustration, particularly in the poorer suburbs of cities like Paris and
Marseille.

Anger is particularly high among second and third generation
Muslim youth. France’s population of 5 million Muslims is Europe’s largest,
and, partially because of the woeful economic situation in this country, France
has had a difficult time absorbing them.

Some of those outraged young people have turned to criminal
activities—from petty to violent. And one of the major areas where their conversion
to violent jihad takes place is not so much in Central Asia’s barren hinterlands,
but in overcrowded French prisons.

Further, a number of those for who have espoused jihad, were
not born Muslims at all, but are recent converts—also proselytized in French prisons.
That’s exactly the background
of Jérémie Louis-Sidney, the 33 year old member of the terrorist gang who was
gunned down after shooting at police attempting

to arrest him last Saturday in
Strasbourg.

It’s the background of many—perhaps all- of the 12 supposed
members of the “terrorist” ring currently being questioned by French police.

Bottom line, forget humanitarian interests. From the coldly
pragmatic view of defeating radical Islam, the French would have been—and still
would be--much better off deploying the billions of Euros they’ve squandered sending
troops, planes and ships to Central Asia, deploying those funds back home where
they really might make a difference.

Thursday, October 4, 2012

It’s estimated
that, for defense and national security, the U.S. spends about one trillion
dollars a year—which amounts to more than 80% of this year’s expected
deficit.

Mitt Romney is promising
to spend even more—an additional 2.1 trillion dollars over the next ten
years. President Obama has called for some cuts, but is loath to challenge the
premises that underlie those enormous expenses.

Why the caution? There are too many powerful interests at
play--what President Dwight Eisenhower in 1961 portrayed
as the Military-Industrial complex—interests sustained by that massive hemorrhage
of American treasure. And those interests- corporations, labor unions, the
pentagon, think tanks, politicians--use their massive clout to keep the torrent
flowing.

To get a sense of that endless outflow, check out a site
called Danger
Zone Jobs. It’s aimed at those—mainly ex-military--looking for work in America’s
sprawling “defense” establishment. To that end, the folks running DZJ, regularly
troll hundreds of major “defense” corporations to produce a list of potential
job opportunities.

Barack Obama may talk about ending the surge in Afghanistan,
pulling out of Iraq, and so on. But the list of new military contracts being
let tells a very different story. 210 major U.S. companies are currently offering jobs in
“Afghanistan, Kuwait, and other high risk areas.”

On Tuesday,
September 25th, 2012, for instance,

L-3 Services Inc., Alexandria, Va., was awarded an
$84,420,000 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide for the
modification of an existing contract to supply services in support of the Law
Enforcement Professionals Program. Work will be performed in Afghanistan.

Comment: But aren’t all U.S.
troops supposed to be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014? And what about, the New
York Times report that the U.S. has also quietly given up on one of its
major goals in Afghanistan—“battering a Taliban into a peace deal “

Instead, after having
spent 1.2 trillion dollars over the past 12 years, lost 2,000 men and 17,000
wounded, surged in and surged out,

“The once ambitious
American plans for ending the war are now being replaced by the far more modest
goal of setting the stage for the Afghans to work out a deal among themselves
in the years after most Western forces depart, and to ensurePakistanis on board with any eventual settlement.

Despite the bleak views of U.S. military and civilians in Afghanistan, the list of new
contracts for that country spews on.

The award will provide for the necessary services in support of the
U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command. Work will be performed in
Charlottesville and Afghanistan.

Thursday, September 27, 2012
--ECC International L.L.C., Burlington, Calif., was awarded a
$13,734,629 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the
construction of three buildings for the Afghanistan National Army.

Thursday, September 27, 2012
-Serco Inc., Reston, Va.,
was awarded an $11,396,739 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract. The award will provide
for the services in support of the Logistics Civil Augmentation Program. Work
will be performed in Afghanistan, Kuwait and Iraq.

Then there’s Iraq:

-American Science and Engineering Inc.,
Billerica, Mass., was awarded a $20,799,851 firm-fixed-price contract. The
award will provide for the contractor logistic support services to the
Government of Iraq.

In fact, the U.S. may be winding down in Iraq, but they’ve
sure been winding up in neighboring Kuwait. September 27th must have
seemed like Christmas for defense contractors involved with that oil-rich.

Thursday, September 27, 2012
--Exelis Systems Corp., Colorado Springs, Colo., was awarded a
$434,442,522 cost-plus-award-fee contract. The award will provide for the
operations and security support services in Kuwait.

Thursday, September 27, 2012
--September Science Applications International Corp., McLean, Va., was
awarded an $82,142,479 cost-plus-fixed-fee contract for the necessary logistics
support across all configurations of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Family
of Vehicles.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

--VSE Corp., Alexandria, Va., was awarded a $13,210,858 firm-fixed-price
and level-of-effort contract. The award will provide for the maintenance and
repair services in support of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected Family of
Vehicles in Kuwait.

Thursday, September 27, 2012

--Honeywell Technology Solutions
Inc is being awarded a not-to-exceed $6,900,718 cost-plus-fixed-fee task order
to provide contingency equipment support on various military vehicles. Work
will be performed within Kuwait.

But, with more than 1,000 American
bases spanning the globe, according to Nick Turse who follows
the phenomenon, job opportunities are by no means limited to old standbys
like Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan. Check out the action in Djibouti, in the
Horn of Africa.

Tetra Tech EC Inc., Lakewood, Colo., is being awarded a
$59,030,099 firm-fixed-price construction contract for the design and
construction of Bachelor Enlisted Quarters and containerized living units for
expeditionary lodging at Camp Lemoniier, Djibouti, Africa.

Hold it! Airfields and bachelor enlisted quarters. Sounds
like they’re settling in for a long stay. But you’re not really sure where
Djibouti is? And you’ve never heard of Camp Lemoniier? You don’t know what CJTF-HOA
stands for? [ Would Romney or Obama?]

It’s the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa (HOA). It was
set up in 2002 to help rout out possible terrorists in the area—think
Somalia, Yemen, the Sudan--and, obviously, it’s flourishing.

Sunday, September 16, 2012Rome Research
has been awarded $14.2m for IT Telecommunication Services in support of the
Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) and other tenants at Camp
Lemonnier, Djibouti.

Question:
Other tenants??

Sunday, September 16, 2012Washington
Consulting Group was awarded $7m to augment the staff at Ambouli International
Airport in Djibouti, Africa and train personnel in order for them to become
certified in accordance with International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
Standards and Recommended Practices (SARPS).

For those of you who thought the U.S. had plunged into a massive undertaking
when it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, just listen to the audacious goals of
CJTF_HOA as proclaimed on their web site.

“CJTF-HOA builds and strengthens partnerships to contribute to security and
stability in East Africa. The task force’s efforts, as part of a comprehensive
whole-of-government approach, are aimed at increasing our African partner
nations’ capacity to maintain a stable environment, with an effective
government that provides a degree of economic and social advancement to its
citizens. An Africa that is stable, participates in free and fair markets, and
contributes to global economic development is good for the United States as
well as the rest of the world. Long Term stability is a vital interest of all
nations.

The government may
be cutting back on vital services in the U.S. but when you read their press
releases, it’s clear that CJTF-HOA is spending America’s money on all kinds
of stuff. Ever heard of VETCAP?

Sep 22, 2012, Fifteen Tanzanian animal
healthcare professionals, Soldiers from the U.S. Army 448 th Civil Affairs
Battalion, and the Joint Civil Affairs Team in Tanzania assigned to Combined
Joint Task Force- Horn of Africa came together to participate in a two week Veterinary Civic
Action Program, or VETCAP, training session in Mkinga District, Tanzania Sept.
3-14.

Question: Whatever ever happened to the U.S.
Agency for International Development?
And then there’s AFRICOM:

From September 19th to 21st, the folks
from CJTF-HOA also took part in a conference attended by 20 military chaplains
from the US Africa Comnand (AFRICOM) and nine East African countries, for the
third annual AFRICOM-sponsored African Military Chaplain Conference in Djibouti
City.

Question? Did everyone get a souvenir coffee mug and T-shirt.

Meanwhile in the Central African
Republic…also on September 27, 2012

Evergreen Helicopter Inc was
awarded a $10,122,153 firm-fixed-price contract. The award will provide for the
transportation services for personnel and equipment. Work will be performed in
Central African Republic.

Checking out what the U.S. might
be up to in the Central Africa Republic, I found a fascinating New York Times
article written last April that could have been penned by Kurt Vonnegut:

“One hundred of
America’s elite Special Operations troops, aided by night vision scopes and
satellite imagery, are helping African forces find a wig-wearing,
gibberish-speaking fugitive rebel commander named Joseph Konywho has
been hiding out in the jungle for years with a band of child soldiers and a
harem of dozens of child brides.

“No one knows
exactly where Mr. Kony is, but here in Obo, at a remote forward operating post
in the Central African Republic, Green Berets pore over maps and interview
villagers, hopeful for a clue…Picture towering trees that blot out the sun,
endless miles of elephant grass, and swirling brown rivers that coil like
intestines and are infested with crocodiles; one of them recently ate a Ugandan
member of the force.

“This is not going
to be an easy slog,” said Ken Wright, a Navy SEAL captain and the commander of
the joint American detachment assisting in the Kony hunt.”

Indeed, American
forces and their African allies are apparently still trying to run Kony down.

Those troops are
among some 5,000 American troops and DOD personnel [remember those job
offers] currently defending U.S. interests across the African continent.

Question: Under
Barack Obama?!

[For more on the
U.S. in Afghanistan, please check out my latest
blogs].

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

A U.S. administration is accused of not increasing security
at a sensitive diplomatic outpost in the Middle East, despite warnings from its
own intelligence agencies. The results are catastrophic.

We’re talking not just about Libya today---but Iran 30 years
ago—when 52 Americans were held hostage for 444 days.

According to several top secret U.S. government documents,
which we revealed on 60 Minutes on March 2,1980, the administration of Jimmy Carter failed to
heed warnings from top Iranian officials and its own diplomats about the
dangers if the U.S. were to admit the deposed Shah of Iran to the United
States.

On November 4, 1979, several hundred radical Iranians,
outraged at the U.S. decision to admit the Shah they detested to New York for
medical treatment, stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran, overwhelmed the security
guards, and took the American diplomats hostage.

It looked as if the Carter administration was innocent,
overwhelmed by events:they had simply
extended a humanitarian hand to a former ally who suddenly and desperately
needed medical treatment.

It later turned out that the taking of the embassy was far
from spontaneous. On the other hand, as we discovered, U.S. government planning
for the Shah to come to the U.S. had begun months before, and had continued
despite ample warning of looming disaster.

Ironically, chapter and verse of those warnings were
provided by files seized during the embassy takeover. As the mobs surged
through the gates, officials inside frantically shredded thousands of documents.
The hostage-takers, however, turned over that supposedly illegible mountain of debris
to an army of local Iranians—many of them supposedly skilled weavers. After
months of effort, they painstakingly pieced hundreds of documents back
together. They were then published and put on sale –outside the American
Embassy itself, for instance, where we picked up a copy.

Among that trove was a State Department document classified
“secret sensitive.” written in August 1979 and titled “Planning for the Shah to
come to the U.S.” That was three months before the Shah’s arrival in New York.
It said that once Khomeini is firmly established “it seems appropriate to admit
the Shah to the United States.”

The discussion between officials in Washington and Tehran
continued. In September, 1979, the embassy’s charge d’affaires, warned that the
Shah’s coming to the U.S. could spell trouble to the embassy. “I doubt that the Shah being ill, would
have much ameliorating effect on the degree of reaction here.”

About that reaction, a State Department report specifically
warned of “the danger of hostages being taken” and advised “When the decision is
made to admit the Shah, we should quietly assign additional American security
guards to the embassy, to provide protection to key personnel until the danger
period is considered over.”

Despite that warning, Henry Precht then head of the Iranian Desk
at the State Department, admitted to us that, “those guards were never
provided.”

The Carter administration attempted to defend itself by
claiming that Iranian officials had assured them that, if the Shah were to come
to the United States, the Iranians would still protect the embassy.

But Ibrahim Yazdi, Iran’s former Foreign Minister, gave us a
different story. He told us that he was officially informed by the U.S. only 24
hours before the arrival of the Shah in New York.

Yazdi said that he then warned the State Department, “You
are playing with fire. There will be a very drastic reaction.”

When President Carter asked then Secretary of State Cyrus
Vance if the embassy could be protected, Vance later told Mike Wallace, “We
said that we could. But we didn’t.”

@barrylando

About Me

Originally from Vancouver, studied at Harvard, Harvard Law and Columbia University, then correspondent for Time Life in South America, and 30 years as Producer with 60 Minutes in Washington D.C. and Paris, where I now live. Wrote book on history of Western Invervention in Iraq, Web of Deceit, now writing a novel, painting, travelling, visiting friends and relatives.